Michael Drews writes:

Recently there have been several off-subject postings to the Utah
Speedskate Yahoo distribution list. As the creator and moderator of the
list I have removed those messages, deleted the people who posted those
messages from the list, and banned them permanently from the group.

My main purpose for setting up the group and distribution list was to
allow people to easily add their names, change their e-mail preferences,
and remove themselves from the list when they were no longer interested
in the messages.

In addition, the list allows others people from the individual clubs to
post messages of interest to the local speed skating community.

In the past there were issues with multiple people maintaining copies of
the lists of e-mail addresses, continuing to send to people who were no
longer interested, and missing new people who had joined the sport. In
addition, the full distribution list was often visible in the "To" field
of the messages that were sent out, so that individual's e-mail
addresses were not kept private, and could be picked up by various spam
programs.

Unfortunately the open nature of the Utah Speedskate group allowed three
individuals to post inappropriate message that were not suitable for all
ages. I'm sorry that the messages were received, and have taken the
following steps to prevent something like that from happening again:

1. The membership in the Utah Speedskate group has been changed from
"Open" to "Restricted." Any new memberships in the group must be
approved by one of the group moderators (currently Michael Drews and Ray
Thacker).

2. Only members of the Utah Speedskate group will be permitted to post
messages to the group.

If there are additional problems with off-subject and inappropriate
postings, the group will be changed to "Moderated" where all messages
posted to the group must be approved by a moderator.

Any individual can remove his or her name from the distribution list by
using the means listed at the bottom of this message.

E-mail continues to be the primary method of communication for Utah
Speedskating. Hopefully these changes will be sufficient to eliminate
the issues with the Utah Speedskate group and distribution list.

Michael Drews
WSSA